The Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) has adopted the NCCI manual for Workers’ Compensation (WC) and authorized the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) to assume certain functions that traditionally have been administered by TDI’s classification and premium Calculation office. TDI is allowing insurance carriers to begin using the NCCI manual as early as June 1, 2014. By October 1, 2014, all carriers must begin using the manual and adopt all of the changes inherent in the conversion to new rates, rules, relativities etc.

Our agency attended a NCCI seminar in Dallas to learn about some of the changes and found out that there are still a lot of details for insurance carriers to work out. Having worked as an employee of a couple of different insurance companies before becoming an insurance agent, I know that there are a lot of changes that will be implemented to adopt the new NCCI manual. I have never missed those days at the insurance company of endless committee meetings and the pressure to get the computer program changes implemented on time. But I must say, the insurance industry always arises to the occasion and gets the job done by the deadline.

As an agent, the one thing that I know that I will miss is being able to call TDI and obtain help on a classification code. The staff at TDI was very good at assigning class codes and even though there are fewer than 400 class codes used in Texas, TDI could generally come up with a class code or class code description for each job that made sense.

About a year ago TDI stopped assigning and ruling on class codes and transferred that authority to the insurance companies. If an agent believed an insurance company assigned the wrong class code, an agent could appeal the decision to TDI and we knew that we had an unbiased referee that would help us ascertain the correct class code, without a lot of red tape. The employer had a comfort level with the TDI decision.

But now an agent must appeal a questionable class code to NCCI in writing. Will this process take longer? Will the employer be comfortable with the process and respect the decision? As an independent agent who represents multiple insurance companies, we are willing to take immediate action to shop your insurance with an insurance company that is willing to assign the correct class code.